» Sun Dec 12, 2010 5:08 am Video games. They are what they are. Art, statements, thoughts, ideas, memories, feelings, and escapes (or even all-too-real insights). That's why we play them, to think, to not think, to shoot things, to see sights, to feel like we're going somewhere where normal life could never take us. This is, of course, all a tie-in with the hows and whys of Skyrim being my main point of interest here. No real need to accentuate on this, because there's a few other things in TES I'd like to touch up on first. Let's start with the games before, that lead us up to this point in time. Arena? No, not exactly. Not enough to go off of there; more like a play-for-yourself basis. Daggerfall? Sure.
Now I know a few people here who basically use this game as holy ground for the series. When Bethesda was still young, but still had its rough draft (Arena) out in the fray. So they could then empower what they had built upon. Graphically, and mechanically. Well, before we an even touch on this, I need to make a statement of all video games, and that is what makes the game have its feel. Is it the way we can control our character, or the way things look, the mood the game capture? Possibly all of the above, and then some. But what I'm getting at, are bugs. How a faulty mechanic can actually give the game its charm. Like I said, a few people here still love Daggrfall amongst all other TES games, for its feel. And I think that there's no denying the bugs within the game. ESPECIALLY if running off of DOSBox, which isn't to say it makes it any less of a good game, but it can certainly add some problems of its own when coming to controlling. But isn't that what kind of makes the game shine? Not like a game-breaking bug, but the little things that you just shake your head at and go, 'Wow, how did THAT make itself into the game?', yet you keep on playing. This is true for Daggerfall, and every game really. It reminds me sort of the old Sega cheat; Left, Down, Up, Right, Left, Down, Up, Right, A, B, A, B. It just has a characteristic all its own, almost. Now as to where I was going with this; I am not going to harp on bugs within any TES game, because they are what they are. So long as it doesn't break the game, or render something within it useless, what is there to really gripe about? Bug-free doesn't mean excellent, and bugged doesn't mean bad. So just to clear the air of that...any way...
Daggerfall still captures the imagination of many because of how it's made to play out. Random dungeons? Random towns? Cumbersome world map? Fairly nauseating dungeon map? How does this make a good game? Initiative. You you truly feel like this is a world, with so many little towns and graveyards and miles and miles of...NOTHINGNESS. It gives a real-world feel to an old-age game. The way they capture the essence of just how insignificant you really are, and how far you can come. Sure, the dialog is nearly-linear, as the only reason you talk to NPCs ever is really to sell things or find where a person/place is. But it does this well, with a system that you can really feel yourself role-playing with. Repetitive dungeons, and nonsensical lay-out? Maybe. But you still get a little creeped out every time you enter one of them, and there's a sort of desolate ambiance and charm to them. They're huge, and they can go on for a long, loooong time. You can find the NPC or quest item you need in the first room, but you still feel compelled to search through, and plunder the depths, finding hidden passage-ways and treasure piles long forgotten by man. This is all very fine and well, and the game always poses a bit of a challenge in how rough it is on the player. Diseases kill, fast. Equipment is hard to come by at first. Leveling takes more than a bit of grinding; because this is, after all, an RPG game. I didn't ever go into any TES game with a pre-defined set of the easiest skills as my major/primary skills so I could level easily. I did it based on how I wanted my character to feel he felt in the game world. Regenerate in water? You bet, it can actually give you a reason to wade around like a goof, and you can make your own interesting reasons as to why your character regenerates in water. Purely role-playing essence. Put Daedric as one of my primary skills? Sure. It can make a lot of sense if you're trying to play a Dunmer who used to be a Daedra worshiper in Morrowind. Restrict a type of armor? Certainly. It can all be tied into how your character feels about certain things. And this is why I believe those few form members love this game still. The way it pulls you in. Sure, it looks blocky and spritey and flat compared to the games we have now, but this kind of stuff was what people pined for back then. The main quest is very well written, if a bit intrusive and certainly a long experience, but it makes the game feel that much more complete. Like you're a true hero, should you decide to to embark on the task. And the lore. They took the base of what they had in Arena, which I believe was years of thought and determination, and expanded upon it with insight and a lot of care. I still think some of the books written in Daggerfall should be in every single game, as most of them are, but some are sadly left to lay dormant in the Mage's Guild libraries. The ways they looked at their world, and took a large chunk of it, and said, 'Hey, we can make this place so much more lively and bustling with the religions and feelings of our characters. We can add exotic landscapes, while barren still almost breathing. We can make huge palaces out in the desert, and tiny islands that hold many secrets.' And it worked, very well. It made you want to learn more, want to get the most out of everything you felt and saw. This game was the basis of which the RPG formula was expanded so far upon, lending to so much character customization, from your house to your ship to your skills and beyond. The fast-travel was nearly a necessity, and it was done well, with different options to traveling and a gold/time cost. Now we can admit, it has its fallbacks, but like I said, they mostly work for its charm and how you know you're playing that game.
Morrowind is still the hot-topic when it comes to what Oblivion was and what it could have been. It happens. I'm not going to start comparing the two, I'm just going to flesh out my own feelings on them. Morrowind is a game that still, to this day, is riveted over. From the ever-amazing mods that come out for it, to the base game itself. The feeling was there again from Daggerfall. Lonesome...desolate, foreboding. Hand-made dungeons? Intricate and varied towns, from little backwater fishing villages to bustling metropolises? Stream-lined world map? Very useful min-map? So we're stepping the game up in terms of what they did in Daggerfall. Though Daggerfall's main quest dungeons were still painstakingly made by hand, and much larger than anything we can kind find in Morrowind, least we forget that. But there was more life to each hand-made dungeon. Actual loot-able things lying about. The NPCs were far fewer, but had much more to say, much more to tell. Rumors, lore, dangers that awaited a new player up north. It really gave you a sense of what you couldn't really see for yourself, just yet. The mechanics were still there, but some skills were taken away and some added in. And though you could argue for the best or for the worse, that matters not here, for you still felt natural using the skills, and how your character progressed and slowly became more able to go out on their own, not getting slaughtered by the first Alt they see. This also begs in question the atmosphere as well. Much more alien, the flora and fauna seems to be of something from a world so exotic, yet so similar to our own, with just a lot more imagination behind it. We still got an eerie sense every time we went into a Daedric ruin, or a Dwemer ruin, or a coastal cave dominated by the water. We had a much smaller map, but it still felt large and expansive. Fast-travel from the map was gone, but we had still our ways of boat, Mage's Guild, mark and recall, and most trademark to the feel of how much of an obscure world Morrowind was, we had the Silt Striders. It fleshed the game out to being far bigger and more intriguing. The main quest was still very much so expansive, as it brought you all over the island, from the large cities to the hidden vales where thousands-year-old wizards dwelt. That with the add-ins of the Great Houses, Comma Tong, and the Imperial Legion, yet the loss of some guilds we saw in Daggerfall, it was a very nice exchange with flavor and politics. The feel of the game, and the landmarks, all added in a level of immersion we simply couldn't capture with Daggerfall, with how it was made. Ghostgate alone was nearly a factor of the feel of the game itself. And the lore. Bethesda, again, took what it had previously and made it more. They gave a whole flavor to Morrowind itself, with how the Great Houses and the Guilds and the Tribunal Temple all worked, how it was just such an important island in such a large empire, how much history was held there. Now I'm a huge freak for lore in TES, and while it could just by my own bias, I have to say that the way lore was handled in Morrowind, even throughout the main question and the expansions, is something that I believe every single game after should follow. It took everything to an immersible level, while we still had to try and realize how alien the land really was. Character creation was made better by separate hair and face options, each race having a distinction all its own, yet we lost a lot of what made character creation so involved in Daggerfall. BUT. The RPG elements were still ever-strong in Morrowind. We could use speech craft to get information out of people, or to taunt them into attacking us first. Everything and anything was up for the taking, and it was all taken with a sense of even if you didn't NEED to take it, it wanted to just because you COULD. It added a whole other RPG element to the game, as to steal food to survive, or to steal because you were a kleptomaniac. Again, we can all admit on the flaws this game has, but I still feel they add to this game's charm, and how you know you're playing it when you can hardly get hit when your agility is high enough.
Oblivion. Well. Oblivion. The game was a graphical achievement. It took what we always wanted to see in TES, a realism factor, and made it happen. The graphics were a huge leap forward, like all other previous titles had been, and it was refreshing. The game had lore, it had a variety of beautiful landscapes, and it had eloquent towns, and lots of places to explore. Now, when I said before, and I quote, "I am not going to harp on bugs within any TES game, because they are what they are. So long as it doesn't break the game, or render something within it useless, what is there to really gripe about? Bug-free doesn't mean excellent, and bugged doesn't mean bad.", this is where I make the exception. I know, I know, we've heard it a million times, and like I said, feel free to stop reading. I'm not hating on the game, I'm just giving an honest opinion on how the aspects were handled. Level-scaling was tedious, at a certain point enemies all become generic, and it took forever to kill them, wasting your armor and weapons and arrow supply or Magicka away. The feel of the game was lost a bit from the last two, and amongst all other things, like I was saying before, the desolation and sense of heroism was gone. The main quest was interesting, because it took a concept of a Daedric invasion into the world, and the end of an entire era. It was a lot in a short amount of game, and it flowed fairly well. But the heroism and desolation, the fruits of your own doings, was lost. You fought big battles with other people, and while that's fien for questing...I don't believe it should be the main focus. However, Oblivion did improve on a few aspect of the game such as AI, and it gave us the shop immersion that was lacking in Morrowind, when shops were open 24/7 (which I'm not saying is a bad thing. I loved it, but it was also nice to have the touch of realism again). But the single problem I had, size wise, was that the RPG element was...different. The combat system was different. Not bad, because I liked how when you leveled up your skills every 25 points, you got mastery bonuses. I think if they had fleshed them out a bit more and made them more tactical, they would have been even better however. But besides the bugged level scaling, there wasn't anything game-hindering in my opinion, just a lot of different design choices, loss of skills, loss of guilds, a little less immersion but a lot more to look at. The RPG feel was shattered somewhat, but it doesn't exactly ruin the game. And they also did try a redeeming factor with Shivering Isles, I believe. The lore and visual look was much more going back to what we loved about the previous games. It was expansive, eccentric, and it pulled you in. Now I could go on, intertwining the three, but I think the point had been made clear on what aspects of the games hit hard and which hit some sour spots.
Now onto Skyrim. I know there's a lot of griping going on, seemingly taking an even-less RPG route to the previous games. And I felt the same way after reading the article. Dragon fights? Collection dragon souls? Perks? BUT! I am just going to come out and say that I HAVE FAITH. I don't know what it is, because its all speculation, but I feel they're going to go back to the desolate feeling on the games. They're going to go and give the RPG elements back to the world. The lore is going to be massive and indulging, and the atmosphere of how significant we can become will still be there. Maybe we'll have our fast travel, and maybe we'll have our action-oriented combat, and maybe we'll just only have 12 skills...but I think they can hold their title true, and they can give the speculation a run for its money. I think it will be very politic and religion oriented, and grim, with lots of interesting flora and fauna, lots to see, to explore, to feel like you're lost miles underground, hoping your last torch lasts until you happen to resurface. I was very turned-off by what I first read, but I'm crossing my fingers and thinking they've got more up their sleeve than they make it seem so far. I mean, like I said, they're Bethesda. It started off as a dream world, and now its nearly a phenomena.
Share your thoughts and contradictions and what you loved/hated about every TES title.
